IDC: Samsung beating Apple in smartphones too

For mobile smartphone dominance, there's only two horses fighting for first: Apple and Samsung. After iSuppli estimated that Samsung now ships more total phones than the previous leader Nokia, IDC now claims that the South Korean company has ousted Apple from its perch atop smartphone shipments as well. They estimate that Samsung shipped 42.2 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2012, to Apple's 35.1 million iPhones. Technically Samsung also sells Windows Phone devices, but it's fair to say that they sold more Galaxy-brand Android phones in the last four months than Apple sold iPhones.

Each analyst firm reaches their numbers separately; the results from IDC and iSuppli disagree on total smartphone shipments, with Apple just barely beating out Samsung in the latter. Both firms agree that Samsung is selling more total phones than any other company in the world, reaching upwards of 90 million in the first quarter of 2012. With Android outpacing iOS in both numbers and growth in almost all major markets, the second quarter results should show Samsung well above Apple in all categories.

Nokia and RIM have hung on to the third and fourth position in the smartphone category, with 8.2% and 6.7% of the market share respectively. HTC rounds out the top five with 6.9 million phones shipped (Windows and Android) and 4.8% of the market. Samsung has 29.1% of the market at present to Apple's 24.2%. The other 40% or so is made up by companies with smaller than a twentieth share of the smartphone market.